A friend of mine used to run a comic shop. I spent many hours hanging out there, chatting with him or harassing his employees. Some of his employees were customers who were simply working for credit, to keep their weekly bill down to manageable levels. And some of his customers were sad little geeks.
[I have changed the names to protect the pitiful.]
Bob, we'll call him. Bob was one of those fireplug shaped guys with the permanent Maalox stains at the corners of his chapped lips, slightly greasy hair that perpetually made you wonder how he always washed it 'yesterday', invoking some sort of temporal Head & Shoulders paradox. He stumped about wherever he went, tried to strike up conversations with anyone who looked as if they might be trying to avoid contact with him and chose conversational topics based on his chosen victim's lack of interest in said topic. And god, did Bob ever have some kind of psychotic, obsessive fixation with 'Super Baby'.
Gary was a banker. Gary liked to collect comics, trade to get the ones he was missing from a collection, and occasionally cash out, selling a complete run of a series for as much as he could get for them. He treated many of his collections as investments, but couldn't hide the fact that he truly loved many of the stories and characters. What he didn't love, however, were comic fan-boys. Gary worked part time at the comic shop to cover a huge chunk of his weekly collection bill, and dreaded every moment when any customer would try to start a conversation with him about comics, or comic characters.
Gary was working one day when Bob came in and did his best to look too busy to talk about anything. So Bob wandered around the store, talking to all of the customers and wheezing and occasionally sucking the spit from his teeth in mid-sentence, none of which was out of the ordinary for him.
As Bob passed one of the regulars at the shop, they pulled him aside and whispered in his ear, setting the stage for the most amusing, and horrifying, event of the evening. They told him, "Bob, Gary just got a new Super Baby comic in today from DC. He's only got two or three and he's keeping them hidden behind the counter. Act cool. Don't let on that you know about it."
This is akin to handing a diver a side of beef, throwing chum in the water and telling a mentally deficient shark to 'act cool', if you're not familiar with the archetypes involved here.
As if on cue, Bob makes for the front counter and grins widely at Gary. Gary knows someone has played him, and is already on the verge of losing his patience. But Gary is always polite, unfailingly professional. Gary never loses his cool.
Bob pesters him non-stop for ten minutes about Super Baby, winking and nudging things resting on the counter in his best, sly 'I know your secret' way, sometimes apologizing as his nudged targets fall to the floor and scatter everywhere. Gary is still unaware that he's allegedly in possession of a non-existent comic that, despite its lack of existence, is highly prized by his tormentor. And, on that day, Gary lost his little mind. It was a brief explosion, but it was remarkable for its intensity and focus.
"Super Baby? Let me tell you a little something about Super Baby, Bob. Super Baby is DEAD! You hear me? Yeah, DEAD! They put kryptonite in his diaper and he got cancer of the butt and DIED!"
Bob silently retreated to his vehicle in the parking lot and sat there for twenty minutes, crying to himself and mourning the world's loss of Super Baby, non-existent toddler fighter of crime. Gary, for months afterward, would be horrified when people came to him and said, "Dude, I heard you made Bob cry."
[SIZE="1"]Louis Armstrong: First trumpet player to set foot on the moon.
Martin Luther: Leader of the Protestant Reformation and icon for the American civil rights movement.
David Bowie: Rock star, inventor of the Bowie knife, faked his death at the Alamo to go on tour as Ziggy Stardust.
Don't believe me? Ask any kid who attends public schools.[/SIZE]